Approval Ratings – Nick Cafardo

A hell of a nice guy, from most accounts.

Cafardo begin his career in Brockton in 1975 before moving to the Quincy Patriot Ledger in 1981. In 1989 he joined the Boston Globe sports staff.

Cafardo has covered both the Red Sox and Patriots during his tenure at the Globe, but his heart is clearly with baseball. During his time on the Patriots beat he was clearly frustrated with the working environment and it reflected in his coverage of the team. Having moved back to baseball, he’s noticeably more confortable and in his element.

He was a frequent presence on the various NESN programs, and in the past was in demand on WWZN radio, ESPN Radio and WBZ-TV’s Sports Final.

Never lets the facts get in the way of his sweaty man love for certain sports figures willing to chat him up….noted water carrier for Roger Clemens…prays nightly for Tom Donahoe’s employment prospects…currently carrying six live salmon in his neck pouch… enjoys writing about contracts and money… frequently looks and writes dyspeptic…balding, gunty…hates the NFL’s cut-throat player relations practices…looks like a 1970s era member of the Pro Bowlers Association…pasty

Laziest and hackiest writer at the Globe. Ignorant of any changes to happen in baseball in the last 25 years, and that’s the sport he likes. Beyond horrible football writer. Solid disapprove, don’t think I’ve ever been more sure of anything in my life.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team do so much to help a competing team within the division get so good so fast. The Bills were in ashes just two years ago. The trade to Buffalo of Bledsoe, sparked their offense. Their offseason moves to revamp their defense has worked well, and taking Milloy away from the Patriots has made them a worthy contender. We don’t even know what Willis McGahee can do yet. It didn’t take long thanks to a little help from the Patriots.”

The Bills proceeded to go 20-28 before mercifully gassing Tom Donahoe (Nick “I’ve always felt Donahoe is the best at what he does in the league”) 3 years later.

Asked to be taken off the Patriots beat because he wasn’t being spoon-fed what he needed. Shows you all you need to know about Lazy ol’ Nick.

Did several years of regular appearance with Andelman on the Zone. That alone would earn a dissaprove. On the Zone, he had about three responses “Yeah..oh yeah”, “Sure”, and “Right.” Played along with Eddie’s antiquated schtick like a puppet.

His mailbag was legendary. It’s final few appearances nearly drove Nick to suicide with the deluge of negative emails that he got.

Still fondly remembers a Gillette stadium rat that nibbled some foot in the corner of the locker room. That rat gave him better copy than the rest of the organization.

Another tired old Globie that mails it in and whores himself out to any TV show that will have him. Cares not that the quality of his work is garbage, so long as the TV checks roll in.

Needs to come to grips with the fact that the last remaining strands of hair on the top of his head would look better on the barbershop floor. If Sarandis can give up the combover, anybody can. Weight flucuates somewhat, but the gobbler under his chin does not.

Former Bills GM Tom Donohoe is only one of the several NFL executives troubled by the recent revelations that the Patriots cheated their way to three world titles. Donohoe has retained high-powered Washington attorney Michael Levy as he considers his next move.

“I think its safe to say that I would have never traded a first round draft pick for Drew Bledsoe had I known he had been given the defensive signals ahead of time,” said a clearly disappointed Donohoe, who sees the game to which he he has given so much collapse around him. “I seriously thought all he needed was some good coaching – but it turns out his problems were much, much deeper than that.”

“And Lawyer Milloy – I wouldn’t have done that either. I realize the Patriots stole only defensive signals, but the confidence Lawyer had as a result of this completely maksed the fact that he couldn’t run or cover to save his life.”

The fact that the reclusive Donohoe is speaking out so openly now shows that the media is on the right track with Spygate. Until the Patriots answer to and apologize for each of the victories they falsly claimed from 2000 through last season, and compensate each of the rival executives who lost their jobs as a result of the Patriots nefarious methods, the story will not be over.

Even though Nick has been known to answer mail bag question from nonexistent cities all across the globe, I must DISAPPROVE! Nick likes baseball, but didn’t like the travel so he moved over to football, but he could never come to grips with the fact that football and baseball are different. He couldn’t hang out in the locker room for hours on end, and the head coach wasn’t inviting the media into his office. Now he’s back on the baseball beat, well the secondary baseball beat. He doesn’t seem to be really covering the Sox, except when Privates Benjamin is out on maneuvers, instead Nick talks with out-of-town GM’s and makes excuses for Roger Clemens. He may have enjoyed his job a few decades ago, but he certainly doesn’t now and it’s reflected in his work. Nick should retire, but he’s got nowhere else to go.

I love how the people who slam Cafardo for having a Clemens note every week are the same people who lavish praise on Kevin Paul Dupont, a guy who does the EXACT SAME THING with Joe Thornton and has his stupid nicknames.

Badly in need of a Globe buyout and some better glasses. Maybe suffering from Excessive Andelman Exposure, a syndrome where a sports reporter slowly enters a state where other teams and ex-local players always seem more appealing to cover than the more successful local teams. This condition eventually led to total career implosion of Ron Borges.

If, as alleged above, he’s a good guy, I hope he can find something that he actually seems to enjoy doing as this doesn’t seem to be it.

Terrible, terrible, lazy hack, who will let his suck-up-ness for his sources (Donahoe, Bledsoe) completely color his “writing”. His books are terrible, too. Consider how he inserted a long pro-Bledsoe, anti-BB rant out of nowhere into the middle of his Pats book.

I can’t see how any of you can do anything other than DISAPPROVE this jerk.

Strong Disapprove, Cafardo is the type of writer that longs for the 50’s. He hasn’t come to grips with the changes in the media landscape and it shows. His writing is devoid of flair, insight and passion. He lets his personal opinion seep into his prose, and his predictions and analysis are Stearnsish in their accuracy. He’s bad at his job and it really shows.

Disapprove. I haven’t enjoyed reading his baseball notes column for awhile now and he seems to be lazy and without a lot of contacts. I agree w/ Rotillo…this guys is badly in need of the Globe buyout..

Bruce…I know he’s been off WEEI for awhile now, but can we vote on Ted Sarandis at some point just for the fun of it? I’d love to see the reaction…

He is equally awful at every sport he covers. Once he gets a source on the team he covers, he protects that player to the end of the earth, regardless of what that athlete has done. See Terry Glenn, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, etc.

What I believe defines his career is the time,about eight yaers ago, when the Pats were about to play the Cardinals at Sun Devil Stadium. He wrote a gushing story about Tedy Bruschi’s return to his alma mater, Arizona State, and how wonderful it was going to be for Tedy to go home and see old friends. The only problem was that Tedy went to the University of Arizona, and it is safe to say Tedy despises Arizona State, which he affectionately to as the “Scum Devils”.

If you read his stories closely there are constant inaccuracies. I also believe he is not above making up a quote or a source to suit the needs of the story.

Seems to be hedging his bets by stroking Kenny Williams along with JP. If one of them gets canned he still has the other as unnamed “American League General Manager/Front Office Executive” source. Has the distiction of being both the worst Baseball Notes and Football Notes writer of the last 15 years.

The only time I’ve ever bought a book, read it, and then returned it for a full refund was with Nick Cafardo’s book about the Patroits and their first Super Bowl-winning season. I expected the beat reporter for the team to bring something new to the table, something that I (as an avid fan who’d followed the team the entire season) hadn’t read before. Unfortunately, it was the WORST example of exploiting a team’s success for commercail profitability that I’ve ever seen: It consisted of snippets from all of his Globe stories throughout the season, and added NOTHING new–no additional insights, no locker room anecdotes. How can a guy who’s supposedly been around the team all year have NOTHING else to add that I hadn’t already read in the newspaper during the season?

The question is: Why was he ever given the Baseball Notes column over Edes in the first place? That column used to be the standard for American sportswriting; now it’s the standard for suckitude.
Two-hundred-fifty-whatever “approves”? As far as I’m concerned, that’s 250 votes from those who don’t know what good writing looks like…or 250 votes from Cafardo himself. Oh wait, that’s the same thing…

A lazy hack that tries very hard to be superior and smug. That’s the important thing to Nicky. Writes the same 4 things every week. He is one of the reasons I canceled the Globe. Why pay for this clown to write nothing on a weekly basis? Another embarrassment in a long line of Boston Media jackals.

Here’s the sad part: Nick is a world-class guy. I can genuinely say that he’s the nicest guy I’ve met among the Boston sports media and I’ve dealt with most of them. What’s most amazing is that he slams stats like defensive zone rating and range factor, but he attends functions for SABR!

Do we believe that the subjects of these polls come here to check them out and read the comments? The nature of the typical sports media hack would suggest that they do, which is a good thing. Our plan is working. Oh yeah…’Bwahahahahahahaha.’

Not a big fan of Nick. The guy has done some major ballwashing over the years of former players. And his number 1 of all time Clemens in theory might have the smallest balls of them all. A baseball note section with value would be nice sometime as well.

This is one of those instances where I’m surprised by the extent of negative reviews. Although I can’t argue with much of this, I find Nick to be relatively benign. I know it’s a sad commentary on the state of local media when I’m voting thumbs up on a guy because he’s not doing any damage, but there it is.

My take on Nick; despite his biases, he reports facts and has a straight-forward writing style. He understands that he’s not the story. He does not engage in hateful, negative, agenda-driven reporting. Unlike Shaunessey or late-stage Borges, I will actually read his stuff when its a topic of interest. Not high standards I know, but there’s not much to choose from out there these days.

A friend alerted me to your piece on the video tape story.I just finished reading it and in a word…..”BRILLIANT.”
I understand people will view me as pro-Belichik in this and that’s fine because I am.
Best regards,
Gil Santos

My comment was meant for Bruce Allens piece and I have no clue how it ended up here.
I’m not in the business of judging other sportscasters or sportswriters.
I’m too busy trying to do my own job and don’t try to tell others how to do theirs.
Gil Santos

Early 90’s cut my wife and I off heading into an elavator to the skyboxes at Fenway. Missed the first few batters…..disapprove! Also, please go write a book about Tom Glavine, instead of putting him the column every Sunday.